vasilievi4
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2015–2019
2:55 · 14K views · Nov 19, 2012
A brief clip of a Nook Simple Touch e-ink reader running PlayStation 1 games through an emulator with a hacked fast refresh rate.
HN cites it as proof that e-ink screens can be pushed to surprisingly high refresh rates, supporting arguments about interactive e-ink uses.
3 comments from Hacker News
Its ‘Mini’ incarnation—or something like that—also dominated on my e-ink Nook Simple Touch by the virtue of working the best on a weak machine with a screen of limited capabilities (grayscale, infrared touchscreen aka no multitouch), under Android 2.1. And I was using it until about three years ago. IIRC Opera Mini also worked on that, but not much else. Guess it's time for me to mourn again that there are no e-ink devices with normal modern Android—the screen is noticeably easier on the eyes, even with the optional ‘ambient’ backlight (emitted from the sides, diffused through the glass). And the screen consumes little power, so the battery can be way smaller: Nook is lighter than my current phone despite having a bigger screen. As for the refresh rate, Nook's screen can be coerced into doing some surprising stuff: this video
I believe it's just due to the niche application space. 2012 era Nook eink reader playing a game with hacked refresh: this video The tech can do better, but as I've heard it told, the market for it has been eink readers. Who needs to refresh their book at 120hz? is the thinking. Folks that want to game or have a "retina" resolution buy a tablet proper. Upping refresh has steep power costs too. Ereader marketers like their "recharge once every 6-8 weeks!" message.
No idea about the actual numbers, but people have gotten ps1 games working on e-ink displays. I'd think that'd indicate it's probably perfectly doable for text editing. this video